“Billboard has learned that today’s SoundScan Building Chart indicates first-day sales of 437,000 for West’s “Graduation,” 310,000 for 50 Cent’s “Curtis” and 107,000 for Chesney’s “Just Who I Am: Poets and Pirates.” More »
After months and months of speculation, insult-hurling, and Hall & Oates album cover re-enactments, the sales showdown between different divisions of Universal Music Group Kanye West and 50 Cent (not to mention country star Kenny Chesney)–an event that may actually lure people into stores that sell albums for the purposes of buying music–is finally here. Aren’t you excited, if only because you’re getting ever closer to never having to read about this clash again?
Ed. note: While the BitTerrorists were downloading the leaks of Graduation and Curtis yesterday, the other contender in the battle for mid-September album-chart supremacy was throwing a sorta-beach party, complete with sandless “sand pit,” in New York City. We sent writer Tobey Grumet Segal to Kenny Chesney’s show at Madison Square Garden, and she got to know the Kenny faithful.
In an interview with Newsday, 50 Cent not only proclaims Eminem “the biggest rapper on the planet” (Curtis, of course, is No. 2), he professes ignorance about the other threat to his run on the top spot come Sept. 11:
Last week 50 Cent was saying that MTV could “suck his dick,” but apparently such concerns are pushed aside when the CEO-like rapper has an album to flog. Sort of. In this clip (since removed, but there’s an excerpt on MTV.com), he sits down with MTV’s Tim Kash and spends a good five or six minutes whining about his lower-than-No.-1 placement on the channel’s “Hottest MCs In The Game” list, which was the original reason for his outburst, even though he’s also claiming that he’s “only in competition with 50 Cent.” So confusing!
Kenny Chesney’s Just Who I Am: Poets And Pirates is yet another album coming out on Sept. 11, and he wants people to know that he might wind up sneaking in between 50 Cent and Kanye West and grabbing the top slot on that week’s Billboard 200. More »
Kenny Chesney fans are apparently into the singer as much for the nonstop, $15, yard-long margaritas as they are for his lite country-pop. I’d also start drinking whisky until blood shot from my pupils if confronted with the prospect of having to sit through a Kenny Chesney concert. More »
– George Michael will not have to do jail time for his recent driving-while-zonked incident. However, he will have to pay fines associated with a 1990 incident in which he destroyed a jukebox and a black leather “Revenge” jacket. More »
